Obstacles to Marriage

I happen to have been reading a lot of books about marriage recently.  I didn't set out to do that deliberately, and there are varying reasons why each one made it on my list, but it has been a consistent theme.  While I very much DO pursue the study of relationships and their development, reading about how to maintain a healthy marriage feels a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

But maybe looking at how to maintain a marriage isn't such a bad idea when exploring who to develop a marriage relationship with.  Better to know what one is looking for before trying to determine how to find them.  While I look forward to getting married, I don't want to rush to impulsively marry the wrong person.

My biggest hope and dream is to have a successful marriage.  I really want to get married, almost as much as I want to NOT get divorced.  In a certain regard, getting married is easy.  It's staying married and maintaining a fulfilling relationship that is the extremely challenging part, for anyone.  Getting married for its own sake or as a response to loneliness is probably the worst idea in the whole world, so I try to maintain a balance in pursuing that goal in a healthy way.

But the big question is, how does one do that?  While I can't know who God has in mind for me to marry, nor how to prepare to meet their specific needs, there are other things I can do to prepare for marriage.  So my primary goal at this point, is to remove any obstacles placed in the path to finding a Godly wife, being a Biblical husband, and having a successful marriage.  I have been working at that for a while, because there are a lot of obstacles to deal with.

First off, I can't be afraid of girls, if I want to marry one someday.  Coming from a family that is nearly all male (and that ratio isn't getting any better in recent months) I have little understanding of the female perspective.  Over the past few years, I have put a lot of effort into interacting with girls and developing friendships with them.  That has been quite successful, and I am now capable of interacting with most females in a much more relaxed fashion.

I also have to be capable of vulnerability and intimacy, which I was not for a long time.  I would attribute working at camp, (and the people I have met there) to my progress in that regard.  It is no coincidence that my first "significant relationship" was developed directly after my first summer working at camp.  I previously feared having a level of connection at that depth, and was unwilling to experience the openness required for it, prior to that point in my life.  I have continued to make large strides in that regard since then.

I only recognized the distance I had come, after a very significant conversation with one of my friends, who had nearly gotten married in the past.  We were extremely close, but not in any romantic sense, so I was using that relationship as an example when explaining to her how I couldn't imagine achieving the deeper level of intimacy required to marry someone.  Her response was that, based on our relationship, there was not some higher order of intimacy that I had yet to experience.  Her contention was that we knew each other well enough to be getting married, that there was not some mysterious deeper level of closeness beyond how close we were.  Obviously a sexual relationship would be physically closer, but since a Biblical perspective presupposes that won't be happening until after marriage, that level of intimacy can't be expected as a prerequisite for getting married.  Realizing the significance of what she was saying made the idea of eventually getting married much less intimidating.  I am capable of being close to someone, it is just a matter of finding someone who is a suitable match to become close with.